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Every day people recognize me and call me by my name.
Every day people say to me “I knew you’d say that, feel that, think that.”
Every day people remember the directions to their own houses.
Every day people understand that they are allergic to shellfish.
Every day people stop themselves from making the same mistake twice.
Every day people communicate with each other.

Every day I’m surprised to find that I can control what my hands do.
Every day I meet someone to only have met them before.
Every day I drink, smoke, and eat foods that are bad for me.
Every day I try to define a wordless word.
Every day I apologize sheepishly for something a literal sheep would do.
Every evening I open my eyes and the world is the same way I left it.

III.

Walking down Shattuck, I saw
a dog trapped inside a ballroom.
The window glass was scratched.
I tried the only door. It was locked.
I left because I was very tired.
Meanwhile there is a dog in a ballroom
pacing the ugly carpet nervously
about her chances of getting out.
People are looking in at the dog trapped
in a ballroom. She is looking out, nose
against the glass. The room is empty.
On my way home I saw two people
at the BART station sleeping standing up.

IV.

Lately I haven’t been wearing makeup.
Lately I’ve been looking tired and upset.
Do I not put on makeup when I’m tired and upset
Or is that my natural state of being, tired and upset?

I once saw Matthew Sherling read poetry on a stage,
and at a party later that night asked him if he writes.
I once saw Brad Warner play himself in a movie,
and at a party later that night asked him if he’s a Buddhist.

I am trying to give myself a method of vanishing cues
so that my existence does not turn bat-like,
bouncing sounds off of solid shapes,
suggestive forms suggesting nothing.

Chop down a tree with pale white wood.
Put a lot of sweat into this action, it will become important later.
Strip it into long creamy slats.
Inhale the woody scent deep into your lungs, it will become important later.
If there is no scent, apply a fragrant oil.
Construct a box from the slats no bigger than an ego.
Fit a graphite crucible.
Obtain a piece of gold perfect in its softness.
Mold the gold gently into the shape of a tree and a lake.
Drop it into the crucible.
Heat the gold with your fury.
Fury until the gold sweats.
Fury until the gold melts.
Fury until the gold sublimates into a thick cloud.
Hold hands with a lover and sit in the box.
Bathe in the gold mist.
Fury at the temperature of the interior of stars.
Fury at the rate of 1 billion million degrees per second.
Fury until the gold becomes a hard lattice.
Fury some more, it will become important later.
Emerge coated in a gold shell of your own hatred.
Burn everything in sight.

It is that time of morning, when flowers catch the water that hasn’t been used and Charles stares at the shadows of trees, half-naked and confused. A screaming comes across the sky.

All I remember is getting shot in the head at the very end. It was a horse’s head, from which small light-green eels were darting furiously. It broke and fell on the ground that pulverized the dust into tiny clouds of silica. The sand slept, the sea slept, the shells had been crushed and did not listen to my pleas. So I impersonated an hour-glass and at the same time tried to think myself into the role of Death by playing with the bones of small rodents. But there was no discernible reason that they should be set up that way! Strange patterns! But if I were to design this instrument I would not put its heart so close to its swords. I suppose decisions like that are for some angel stationed very high, watching us at our many perversities, all of it being carried out under a sentence of death whose deep beauty the angel has never been close to….

Instead I preferred to ponder the tricks I might play if given your beautiful pussy, some carrots, and a small live starfish. (They told me, “She’s no Kasabian goose, she’s a German National bird and tastes just like before the war.”) But it was a sensory ship that brought me here, something like scent yet infinitely more secluded and gripping. None of this was ever thought out. No, you wore it as one would an earring or perfume. Flowery, permeating, surprising, more than the color of winter sunlight—it is not often Death is told so clearly to fuck off. Only when the vanilla brought tears to my eyes, only when I began to taste mushrooms or some acrid spice, this earthy smell that contaminated me for all time with the taste of perishability—only then did I let go.